Page 26 of A Hero Comes Home

“I was worried.”

“I could tell.”

What did that mean? Had he been acting all Nervous Nellie? Pathetic?

His father and the kids were back, with the kids doing all the carrying of the heavy bag, which they dropped at his feet with a thud. They stared expectantly as he unzipped the bag, slowly, just to tease them. He could tell they wanted to tell him to hurry up. First he pulled out a large box, about the size of a laptop but thicker. There were also six smaller packages. All of them had been gift wrapped by the nice lady at one of the gift stores in the Ramstein Air Base exchange. She, being a grandmother, was the one who’d advised him on what to buy for boys their ages. He might very well have opted for Rubik’s Cubes or stinky T-shirts.

The kids quickly ripped at the bigger package and then just stared, at first. Stunned, really.

At first, he wasn’t sure if it was good stunned or bad stunned.

But then Matt exclaimed, “Nintendo Switch! Wow!” and his brothers agreed with echoes of “Wow, wow, wow!”

“How did you know they wanted this?” Sally asked him.

He shrugged. “I just asked myself what I would have wanted at that age.” And got advice from a seventy-year-old grandma.

“Well, you hit the jackpot. They asked for it last Christmas, but I told them it was too expensive.”

After examining the console and accessories in their hard protective case, the boys made quick work of the six smaller packages. Games, of course. Minecraft. Super Mario. Dragon Ball. Starlink. Mega Man. Donkey Kong.

He’d gone with his instinct not to buy any blood and guts, or zombies, and knew he was right when Sally went over to check them out before giving him a thumbs-up. She’d probably expected him to get a special ops terrorist-fighting game with fancy weapons and the number of kills determining the winner.

Okay, yes, he had looked at one like that.

“They had a game on fishing simulation that I almost bought so that you could play with the boys,” he told his father, who sat in the other easy chair, on the opposite side of the window. With the morning sun coming through the stained glass, framing his father, it could have been an oil painting, he thought with what was probably hysterical irrelevance.

“Hah! I get all the fishing I want out on the water, thanks just the same.”

The kids wanted him to set up the game right away.

He glanced to Sally to get her approval.

She nodded. “You could put it here, or upstairs in their bedroom where they have a small flat-screen TV.”

“Uh, how about here for now?” He was going to make only one trip up and down those stairs each day, for the time being. His leg couldn’t take much more than that. Thank God there was a bathroom on this level, even if it had only a toilet and sink.

Another nice thing about Craftsman homes was all the fine woodwork and the built-ins. Like the corner cabinet that was never intended to hold a television in its day, but worked perfectly for the set that was there now with several of the shelves removed and stored down below. He soon had the game system set up and ready to go, but Sally insisted that they all eat first, despite the moans and groans from the kids, especially since she made them wash their hands first, which they considered torture.

I could tell them a thing or two about torture. Or not.

No, I will not let my mind go there.

He saw that Sally had set the table in the dining room, instead of the kitchen, making this a sort of special event. He sat at one end, his father and Matt on one side, and Mark and Luke on the other. Sally stood at the other end of the table about to serve the steaming chowder from a tureen in front of her. Bread and pats of butter were set at each place setting.

She hesitated, then asked him, “Will you say grace, Jacob, or would you rather your father do it?”

He would have liked to refuse, but that would sound like he was no longer the head of his family, or that he’d lost his faith, which was still up in the air. “I will,” he said, making it brief. “Thank You, Lord, for this good food. And for my family.” He paused. “And thank You, God, for bringing me home.”

“Amen,” they all said, even the kids.

Everyone dug in then, and the food, simple as it was, was excellent. He had two helpings before the cake was served with ice-cold milk. That, too, was excellent, even better than his mother’s, he had to admit.

Mostly, things weren’t awkward, as he’d expected, because the kids talked nonstop. About everything.

Boy Scouts. “Those darn knots!” Jake was reminded by Luke.

Bicycles . . . Mark’s needed a new chain.